1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and to an image processing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image processing apparatus of the type that is capable of detecting a person's face by analytical processing of a captured video is coming into wider use. Owing to improvements in the accuracy of face recognition, it has become possible to compare the results of face detection applied to multiple items of video and to determine whether detected faces are those of the same person. This has made it possible to store the results of face detection applied to video and to create a database for retrieving an image in which a designated person appears.
Further, an increase in capacity of recording media in recent years often is accompanied by the storage of many items of video within an image sensing apparatus, and selecting any item of video from among these is difficult. As an implementation to which a face recognition technique is applied in order to solve this problem, a moving picture display technique has been proposed in which video is divided into arbitrary sections and sections in which certain persons appear are retrieved and displayed in a list, thereby facilitating the selection of a desired section (see the specification of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-234004).
Further, a method of facilitating association between an image and a person captured in the image and retrieval of the image has also been proposed (see the specification of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-079461). This is a technique whereby persons included in the same image are grouped, a plurality of images are classified based upon the group and video retrieval is performed using the group as an index.
However, with the proposal of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-234004, only video in which a single person has been captured can be retrieved, and retrieval efficiency is not high enough for use in devices such as consumer camcorders and digital cameras where there are many opportunities shoot specific persons such as family members and friends.
Further, with the technique of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-079461, it is necessary to find and designate a desired group out of all groups detected in order to perform retrieval. In a case where there are a large number of groups, therefore, it is not easy to find one group among these. An alternative method that is conceivable is to allow the user to designate all of the persons included in a desired group, whereby the group is specified. However, searching all registered persons only for persons belonging to the group is laborious; the larger the number of groups and the larger the number of persons belonging to these groups, the more labor is imposed upon the user.